As the 1860s drew toward their close, Ruskin was, for a second time, defeated. He had exited the previous decade deeply depressed, convinced (correctly) that all his early labors of love―his many works on art and architecture, all extolling the beauties of creation―had failed in their prime intent: to motivate their readers to not merely cultivate a reverence for such marvels, but initiate the conscientious efforts which would be required to preserve them, both for themselves and, as importantly, generations still to be born. The true reason why these closely argued, copiously evidenced, early works had missed their marks, he rightly saw, was that the great majority of his learned and affluent contemporaries had been snared by the cupidity generated by the Industrial Revolution. They all wanted to be rich, however that ardently desired status might be gained. In which milieu, beautifully written books urging them to set that unquenchable thirst aside in favor of experiencing delightful days in the mountains admiring God’s gentians were not―leaving out of consideration the pleasures always bestowed by Ruskin’s fine words―high on the list of their desiderata. Indeed, when they thought about it, it was obvious that Ruskin’s recommendations, however heartfelt and seemingly reasonable they were, were patently inimical to such accumulation. Hence, they ignored them.
After two years of musing on the problem, Ruskin determined that he would cease writing on art, architecture, and nature, and devote all his energy to works of social criticism, every paragraph of which would be devoted to making it clear to his fellows just how far they had wandered from the path of decency and kindly practice which had been repeatedly articulated in the core teachings of Jesus Christ, the man they all would, without hesitation, acknowledge as their Spiritual Master. Once they grasped how ravenous they had become, he reasoned, once they saw that he was quite right in his exposings and admonitions, they would bring their self-centered efforts to full stop and gladly initiate the changes needed to bring a truly humane society into being, would accept too the reformative proposals he had set out in his early books.
The tactic failed. Miserably. Not only were Ruskin’s readers resistant to taking his social critiques seriously, they vilified him for having proposed them. His first criticisms in this vein had been met with surprise. What was a brilliant art critic hoping to accomplish by writing this irksome drivel? He should’ve stuck to composing more mesmerizing paeans to Turner, Venice, and the Alps. Surprised, but undaunted by the rebuffs, Ruskin kept on condemning the greed and self-centeredness of his time. As he did, the initial public shock gave way to rage and both the man and his reformative suggestions were broadly condemned or ridiculed (or both) in the press. Twice his publishers were pressured by their readerships into stopping him from printing any more of the needling stuff.
As the 1860s advanced, it became more and more obvious that the Ruskin who, for the two prior decades, had been the toast of elite society, had gone missing, only to be replaced by a censorious critic who bit―often and hard, with neither compunction nor apology―the hand of the social class to which he belonged and which had so very generously fed him. As a result, as the final months of the 1860s moved toward their place in history, omitting a handful of true friends, Ruskin found himself face to face with a phalanx of former admirers who were now his avowed enemies.
Confronted once again with the failure of his written works to change the thoughts and behaviors of the elites of his era, he decided that there was no help for it but to find some way to renovate his dysfunctional social order himself. To initiate the process, in January, 1871, he published the first of what would eventually become a series of 96 public letters to which he gave the name Fors Clavigera. (The perplexing name would be explained over a number of letters.) Addressed to “The Workmen and Laborers of Great Britain,” the letters’ intent was to alert this new audience to the threat to civilization posed by a society whose privileged had become little more than avaricious machines, as he simultaneously convinced them that they should take on the challenge of creating a new and humane society themselves, a new framework for living whose members would be devoted to actualizing two broad principles: a commitment to loving their neighbors as themselves and a determination to live in tune with nature―commitments which, in practice, Ruskin believed, would immediately begin to reduce the poisonous passion for “more” and begin reclamation of the priceless natural environment on which the well-being of all depended.
Logo of The Guild of St. George. Used by permission of The Guild of St. George. The image is based on Ruskin’s drawing of Vittore Carpaccio’s painting in The Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice.
The new community would be named The Guild of St. George (see Fors Letter 17, LE 27: 292-303), so christened in honor of England’s patron saint whose enduring charge was to destroy all that was inimical to health and life. To aid in the effort, he would contribute a tenth of his income in each of the years that remained to him. For those desirous of joining him as Companions (for so The Guild’s members would be called), he introduced, in his letter for October, 1875, a creed to which he assumed any decent human being, living anywhere in the world, whatever his or her religious or cultural background might be, could subscribe, a creed which, once it was put into practice, would act as a balm, repairing, one by one, the sores and lacerations which had been so willfully inflicted by the voracious behaviors of the so-called “higher” social classes.
The 39 volumes of The Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin contain within their 78 covers over six million words. If any in this vast assembly might stand as emblems pointing to the unwavering moral core and unceasing commitment to human welfare of the sage who has been the subject of this essay, those that follow, the first seven articles of “The Creed of the Guild of St. George,” would serve as well as any, and serve as well as a final counter to anyone who might still harbor some notion that surely something about Ruskin disingenuous or worrisome.
I. I trust in the Living God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things and creatures visible and invisible. I trust in the kindness of His law, and the goodness of His work. And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law, and see His work, while I live.
II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, the fullness of its mercy, and the joy of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did.
III. I will labor, with such strength and opportunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread, and all that my hand finds to do, I will do with my might.
IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human being for my gain or pleasure, nor hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure, nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human being for my gain or pleasure.
V. I will not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty, upon the earth.
VI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul daily into higher powers of duty and happiness, not in rivalship or contention with others, but for the help, delight, and honor of others, and for the joy and peace of my own life.
VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faithfully, and the orders of its monarch, and of all persons appointed to be in authority under its monarch, so far as such laws or commands are consistent with what I suppose to be the law of God, and when they are not, or seem in anywise to need change, I will oppose them not with malicious, concealed, or disorderly violence, but deliberately and loyally.1
The Guild of St. George was, at best, a tepid success. As the 1870s wore on, only a trickle elected to join Ruskin as Companions and, other than himself, almost no one donated enough to sustain more than a few of the group’s creditable visions and projects. Making matters worse, Ruskin, the first Master of The Guild, did not prove to be a very effective administrator.
Faced with yet another significant failure, Ruskin pressed on, returning to his forté, writing, publishing, between 1878 and 1888, no fewer than eight books even as his strength and, not infrequently, his mental equanimity, slipped away: Proserpina (his paean to the beauties of flowers), Love’s Meine (a similar celebration of birds), Deucalion (yet another appreciation: this one bringing his readers’ attention to the usually missed loveliness of waves, stones, valleys, and mountains), In Montibus Sanctis (another toast to mountain beauty), The Bible of Amiens (which argued, while its pages walked you around the sculpted exterior and, chapel by chapel, stained glass window by stained glass window, the breathtakingly intricate sanctuary, that the great cathedral contained nothing less than a history of human life as well as a representation of all the lessons one needed to learn concerning how best to live it), The Pleasures of England and The Art of England (collections of his last lectures as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford), not to mention what many regard as one of his most important public lectures, “The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,” three collections of letters, Frondes Agrestes (“Leaves of the Field,” a selection of his best passages from his Modern Painters series chosen by his beloved friend, Susie Beever), Hortus Inclusus (“delights of the garden,” a collection of letters posted to Susie Beever) and Arrows of the Chase (a large collection of what he saw as his most important, previously uncollected, letters to newspapers), and, hardly least, the majority of his always delightful, always insightful, never-completed, autobiography, Praeterita (still viewed as one of the finest in the genre)―all of which came into being because of their author’s hope that someday, somewhere, they would do someone some real good.
Last modified 19 January 2019